Innovation (Finalist)

North Canton-based Area Wide Protective (AWP) Inc. hires traffic control specialists, or flaggers, at an incredibly high rate of 300 workers per week — a particularly challenging task given the high rate of turnover in the field.

Making this task even more cumbersome is the intensive hiring and onboarding process. That's where Heather Adamson comes in, as she was charged with putting in place a process that could handle this high volume.

She led the charge on selecting and implementing a new applicant tracking system and establishing a process that allowed online applicants to move through the hiring process with incredible speed, the nomination said. Also, this process was implemented over only five weeks, allowing the company to immediately improve its recruiting, according to the nomination.

Now, the background check process, drug screen and personality assessment are integrated in the recruiting process to "eliminate these touch points" that were historically handled manually, the nomination said.

"Heather tackled the difficult task of high volume traffic control hiring with the open mind of a college freshman and the grit of a prize fighter" AWP president and CEO John P. Sypek wrote in the nomination. "She assembled a team to research best practices, flexible technology, and performance metrics, hired a team of like-minded, 'accomplish-the-mission' professionals, and the outcome has been a recruiting and hiring platform that provides us a sustainable, competitive advantage in the marketplace meeting the ever increasing demands of our customers with quality people."

Also as part of this transformation, AWP's orientation and hiring process has been shortened dramatically. According to the nomination, applicants who apply on Thursday are scheduled to start orientation and training the following Monday.

"Given current hiring benchmarks of 300 confirmed new employees per week, this reduction in time and expense represents a tremendous savings," the nomination said.

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